


Time for Childish Nonsense

by GettheSalt



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Secret Santa
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 16:26:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1311463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GettheSalt/pseuds/GettheSalt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It isn’t that Fitz minds that Ward’s, overall, nicer with Skye and Simmons, hell, even with May and Coulson. It’s just that, sometimes, he wishes. Nothing wrong with that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time for Childish Nonsense

It isn’t that Fitz minds that Ward’s, overall, nicer with Skye and Simmons, hell, even with May and Coulson. At least, that’s what he tells himself, aloud, in the lab, after Ward leaves. Simmons looks across the holographic schematic of the scene they’re investigating at him, giving him a level look. “Ward isn’t any nicer to us than he is to you,” she points out briskly.

This is a conversation that they haven’t had before, but it’s one that Fitz has been suspecting was on the way for a while. Jemma isn’t blind, and she certainly has no issues seeing things when it comes to him. She’s known for a while that Fitz has been, in short, battling some kind of on-again off-again crush on the specialist; she was the one who pointed it out to him in the first place. He never would have used the word ‘crush’. Infatuation, fascination, but not ‘crush’. And on-again, off-again is giving him more credit, because it’s only gone off once, for the total of sixty-three hours, before he got that annoying swooping feeling when Ward actually smiled at him and nodded in approval over a modification to the night-night gun’s trigger mechanism.

The whole issue with the thing, though, whatever you call it, is that he’s feeling it at all. It’s not like Leo Fitz has never had crushes before. There were a few little girls when he was in school, a few more in high school, a boy or two who sort of caught his fancy, and then another handful when he was at the Academy. The issue here, though, is there is nowhere to run. They’re all stuck on a bloody great plane together, 24/7, potentially 365. Sure, they have the occasional shore leave, but that’s a night, maybe two, at best, before they’re piling back onto the Bus and jetting out around the world to do what the job expects of them.

It’s a bit harder to ignore the swoop in his belly when he can’t go even three hours without seeing Ward.

“Well,” Fitz argues, not meeting her eyes, and beginning to dig into the holograph with his fingers. “He is a bit, you have to admit.”

Simmons opens her mouth to reply, but thinks better of it when the lab doors swoosh open. It’s one thing for the two of them to have this conversation, but if Ward were to come back, or May or Coulson were to walk in, it wouldn’t be a good scene. Fitz doesn’t exactly relish the idea of having to talk to any of those three about what he and Simmons were discussing.

When they look over, though, it’s just Skye. She smiles at both of them, bobbing on her feet a little while she jabs a thumb backwards over her shoulder. “Where’s Ward off to? I thought he was going to be helping you guys break down the shooter’s angle and everything.”

Simmons nods, smiling at Skye and beckoning her over to the holotable, pointing out the three red squares they’ve marked off. “He already did. Given where the targets were, and how the bullets entered their bodies, the shooter could have only been in these three places.” Skye leans on the edge of the table and nods.

“So, what’s the next step?” she looks up, glancing between both of them, before frowning at Fitz. “What’s up, Doom and Gloom?”

Leave it to Skye to notice right away that he’s not exactly a ray of sunshine right now. He shakes his head, going back to working on his red square, prompting the video feed for that corner of the laboratory that the shooting occurred at. He doesn’t feel like answering, but that’s okay, because Simmons takes it on herself to answer.

“He thinks Ward was mean to him,” she saids, her tone just this side of teasing. Fitz looks up, narrowing his eyes and shaking his head again, this time with more vigour, against the smirk that is slowly spreading over Skye’s face.

“I didn’t say he was mean to me,” he starts. “I said he is nicer to the lot of you than he ever is to me.”

What he didn’t expect from that statement is for Skye to laugh. Actually laugh, head thrown back, clapping her hands together. Simmons doesn’t seem to expect it either, from the half-startled smile on her face and the way her eyes flick from Fitz to Skye and back. When Skye finally gets it out of her system, she gives Fitz a headshake of her own, waving her hands in an apologetic fashion.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, the thing is… _Fitz_ ,” she puts her hands on the edge of the table again, leaning forward, giving him an earnest look. “Ward is plenty nice to you. He’s more… delicate with Simmons and I because, let’s face it,” she shrugs one shoulder. “We’re girls. And he has this kind of irrational need to protect all of us. You, on the other hand,” she points her fingers at him like a gun. “You’re not only covered in that whole canopy of protection thing he’s got going on, but, you also give him a hell of a lot more snark than I do. I sass him. You stare him down and call him out. I don’t know what happened when you guys were out in the field dealing with the Overkill device, but whatever it was, you showed him something.” She leans back again, eyebrows raised in a ‘point proven’ kind of way. “He knows he doesn’t have to be more delicate with you because you guys have a whole different kind of understanding. He’s plenty nice to you. For Ward. He isn’t nice to May the same way he’s nice to us,” she gestures between herself and Simmons. “And isn’t nice to Coulson the same way he’s nice to you, but he _is_ nice to you.”

“I can’t believe we’re having a conversation about Ward being _nice_ ,” Simmons says in an undertone, and Fitz shoots her a look. “But, look, Fitz. You’re worrying over nothing.”

“You’re worrying,” Skye cuts in. “Because you’ve got a crush on him.”

Fitz drops his hands to the table, giving them both an incredulous look. “We aren’t really having this conversation right now, are we? You two are not going to girl talk me,” he shakes his head, going back to work. “Just… drop it, all right?”

~~~

There’s something about Christmas on a suped up plane that feels weird, but at the same time, feels right. Skye wrangles FitzSimmons into decorating the plane, from the lab to the bunks to the lounge, even a little in the cockpit. May allows it with no more than a small smile, and the missions go on with a sprinkle of silver and gold, red and green. It’s homey, and unique to them, and Ward has to admit, he likes it.

The only thing he’s not keen about was the muttering he overheard between Simmons and Skye about mistletoe. The last thing they need tied up around the plane is mistletoe. Not only would it be an excellent distraction from getting any kind of work done, but it wouldn’t be a party to be staring upwards everywhere he went.

It’s why, when he finally spots the mistletoe, he feels triumphant. It’s bent and jammed into the holdings around one of the lights in the briefing room, of all places. Maybe the girls were aiming to make briefings a little more exciting. Whatever their aim, though, they didn’t put it out of his reach, and if he has anything to say about it, it’s coming down. He’s just reaching for it when there’s the sound of throat clearing in front of him, and, looking down, he sees Skye standing in the doorway, just a few feet away.

“Whatcha doin’, SO?” she asks, head tilted to the side coyly,  back pressed to the doorjamb. Ward raises an eyebrow, dropping his hand from reaching for the mistletoe to his hip.

“What are _you_ doing, Skye?”

“Watchin’ you,” she says, swaying slightly against the door. “Waiting… for my chance…”

Ward narrows his eyes. This isn’t like Skye, not at all. The cliché, over-sexy delivery is far from her style, and definitely not something she’d pull, here, now. Still, she’s combing her fingers through her hair, and actually batting her eyelashes at him.

“Waiting for your chance?” he prompts.

“You know…” she continues, leaning forward a little. “My chance to catch a ki—”

“Skye?”

Ward glances over his shoulder, catching sight of Fitz and Simmons in the opposite doorway. Simmons is hanging back a little, hands clasped and lips pursed. Fitz, on the other hand…

Looks like a storm brewing. He’s never been good at hiding his emotions, and it might be a weakness, but Ward’s finding, more and more, that he loves it, a little bit. Being a specialist means that the better part of his job is spent with people who wear about seven or eight different masks at once. Being around someone who isn’t afraid to show anger, or, like right now, jealousy – and that’s what it looks like, even if he doesn’t want to acknowledge the spark of elation that lights in the back of his mind – is a welcome change. One he isn’t likely to want to give up any time soon.

“Hey, Fitz!” Skye greets, dragging out both words, tone high and light.

“What are you…” Fitz glances up, moving closer carefully, clearly just as aware of the mistletoe as Ward is. He doesn’t finish his question, mostly because he looks like he’s trying to figure out how to word things, but probably partly because at that second Simmons rushes forward, pushing her hands against Fitz’s back, sending him stumbling forward against Ward’s chest, both of them bumbling back a few steps, rather than falling down.

“Yes!”

Ward looks up, sees Simmons’ sheepish grin, looks back and sees Skye’s triumphant smirk while she points up at the mistletoe that is now innocently above their heads.

Maybe he wasn’t as difficult to read as he’d thought.

Fitz’s hands hand landed on his forearms, and they’re squeezing almost to the point of pain. He’s saying something to Skye, but Ward can’t make it out over the realization that the two of them had planned this from the start. And, really, Simmons wouldn’t do something like this to Fitz, wouldn’t want to purposely humiliate or hurt him, unless the two of them knew something that he and Fitz didn’t…

One look at Fitz’s face is all it takes to convince him that that’s the case exactly. And, really, how could he have been stupid enough to not notice. Fitz is resolutely staring back at him, but the set of his mouth and the uncertainty in his eyes is more than enough to let Ward know – if it weren’t for the fingers digging into his arms – that Fitz is a bit terrified about how this is going to go. Terrified, but not willing to back down.

It’s that, more than anything, that has him pulling one arm out of Fitz’s grip to tilt his chin up, watching the uncertainty waver in his eyes before he leans down and kisses the engineer. It’s nothing deep and passionate, nothing dramatic, but it sends a jolt down his spine, and then another when Fitz reaches up and cups his face, pressing into the kiss more, making a quiet, pleased noise. Ward hears the sound of shuffling feet, the slap of a high five, but he doesn’t have the presence of mind to pull away and give the two girls a level look.

Not until Fitz pulls away, dropping down to standing flat on his feet again, blinking up at Ward through glazed eyes. Ward looks him up and down, wanting to ask more questions, wanting to see if this is the start of something neither of them saw coming, but too engrossed in drinking in the image he presents.

And wanting too much to kiss him, deeper, this time, and get that noise again.

So, he does, and in the back of his mind, while Fitz is wrapping his arms around his shoulders and humming contentedly, he makes a mental note to thank Skye and Simmons for the excellent Christmas gift.


End file.
